Former Nazi death-squad member loses latest appeal of government’s decision to strip Canadian citizenship

A 95-year-old accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes during the Second World War has lost his latest appeal of the federal government’s decision to strip him of his citizenship, a development that may pave the way for his removal from Canada. Observers say that the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must now make a political decision about whether to order the deportation of Helmut Oberlander, whose legal battles to remain in Canada began in the mid-1990s. Mr. Oberlander hails from a German family and was raised in Soviet-controlled Ukraine before he came to Canada in the 1950s. He has had his citizenship stripped by successive Liberal and Conservative governments over the past 25 years, but has used the courts to appeal and stave off deportation. He has admitted to being a teenage interpreter for what Canada’s courts have called a “civilian-killing squad” active in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during the war. But Mr. Oberlander has argued he was a conscript who never took part in any violence. In his latest appeal launched last year, Mr. Oberlander argued a more technical point. Specifically, he argued that the latest judge could have been potentially biased because he presided over a previous iteration of the long-running case. The Federal Court of Appeal rejected that line of argument this week. “I would therefore order … that the notice of appeal be removed from the court file and that the file be closed,” Justice Donald Rennie, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, ruled on Wednesday. It’s unclear whether Mr. Oberlander will appeal this latest ruling. Jewish groups, who have long been pressing Ottawa to remove Mr. Oberlander, say that his legal fight may be finally finished.